Biggest concert tragedies of all time

Concerts are usually a great time, but things can turn bad in a heartbeat. Of course no one expects to go to a concert and actually die but it can, and does happen.

Here are some of the worst concert tragedies over the years that have rocked and shocked us.

1. Free Rolling Stones Concert at Altamont Speedway, 1969

Organized and headlined by the Rolling Stones, the Altamont Festival also featured Santana, Jefferson Airplane, The Flying Burrito Brothers and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The Grateful Dead were originally included in the lineup but they bailed out because the event was so disorganized.

Some heralded the event as being “Woodstock West,” with roughly 300,000 people in attendance. What started out as a good idea is best remembered as an event marred by violence and death.

The Rolling Stones hired motorcycle gang Hells Angels to provide security at the event. They traded the Angels $500 worth of beer in return for controlling the crowd.

During the Stones’ set, an 18-year-old black man named Meredith Hunter got into an altercation with the Hells Angels. He drew a long-barreled revolver and a member of the Hells Angels stabbed him five times. He was then kicked to death.

The entire brutal event was captured on film by three cameras because documentary filmmakers Albert and David Maysles were there filming the Stones’ 1969 US tour, which was later made into the film Gimme Shelter.

Two people also died in a hit-and-run, another drowned and 850 were injured.

2. The Who in Cincinnati, 1979

It was December 3rd, 1979, and 18,500 fans had gathered outside the Coliseum in Cincinnati.

The concert was general admission, meaning that the best seats in the house were first come, first serve and already more people had gathered than the venue could hold.

The energetic scene quickly turned chaotic as the large crowd surged toward the doors, trampling upon and crushing 11 people to death.

Ron Duristch–one of the many Who fans caught in the crowd–describes the horror of the hellish situation:

“A wave swept me to the left and when I regained my stance I felt that I was standing on someone. The helplessness and frustration of this moment sent a wave of panic through me. I screamed with all my strength that I was standing on someone. I couldn’t move. I could only scream. Another wave came and pushed me further left towards the door. I felt my leg being pulled to the right. The crowd shifted again and I reached down and grabbed an arm at my leg. I struggled for awhile and finally pulled up a young girl who also had a young boy clinging to her limbs. They were barely conscious and their faces were filled with tears.” - Crowdsafe.com

The Who were not informed of the deaths until after the show. Needless to say, the band was very upset to learn that fans had died trying to get into their show.

The tragedy in Cincinnati was the result of a lack of crowd management at the event. In the wake of the deaths, a lot of attention was directed to the importance of crowd control, and Cincinnati put a moratorium on general admission seating.

3. Pearl Jam at the Roskilde Festival, Denmark

Inspired by the famous music festival Woodstock, the Roskilde Festival in Denmark is Europe’s largest outdoor concert. In the year 2000, it drew a crowd of about 100,000.

In June of 2000, Pearl Jam took to the stage in front of a crowd of about 50,000 people. Fans in the back of the crowd couldn’t hear the music well enough so they decided to move up.

The crowd pushed towards the front of the stage, sparking a stampede that crushed people near the front. The band repeatedly asked the crowd to move back but they did not comply.

Some people slipped and fell in front of the stage and were trampled to death. People were climbing on top of each other to get air.

The tragic event caused the Cure, who was next to perform, to cancel their set although shows continued on at the other stages. In total, eight people lost their lives.

4. Great White at the Station Nightclub, Rhode Island, 2003

On the night of February 20, 2003, the fourth-deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history claimed 100 lives at the Station nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island.

The band Great White was headlining the show that quickly turned into a nightmare.

The band had just started playing the first song in their set when the tour manager Daniel Biechele set off a pyrotechnics display.

Sparks from the display ignited the soundproofing foam and the whole place quickly went up in smoke as fans were trapped inside.

The club’s capacity was 250 people and there were 432 people there. As fans stampeded towards the door, the exit quickly became blocked, trapping many inside where they perished in the flames.

Although there were other exits, people naturally headed for the door where they came in, causing a deadly bottleneck situation.

It was later discovered that the foam was not actual soundproofing foam and was in fact highly flammable, causing the club to ignite like a tinder box. Half of the staff died because they were pushing people out the doors

A reporter who was ironically doing a story on club safety captured the entire fire.

You can see how quickly the flames spread and how hard it was for people to escape.

5. Murder of Dimebag Darrell, 2004

dimebag1.jpgOn December 8th, 2004, Damageplan was playing at the Alrosa Villa nightclub in Columbus, Ohio when guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott (of Pantera fame) was shot and killed by a gunman.

Damageplan had just begun playing the first song in their set for a crowd of about 250 people when gunman Nathan Gale jumped on stage and shot Dimebag several times in the chest after making comments about Pantera. Gale then opened fire on the crowd.

Gale took a hostage onstage and was about to shoot him when Columbus police officer James Niggemeyer took him out with a single fatal shotgun blast. Gale had fired a total of 15 shots and five people died in total.

It turns out that Gale was a paranoid schizophrenic former US Marine who was having delusions that Pantera was stealing his thoughts and were laughing at him.

6 comments:

República Cromañón (Spanish for "Cro-Magnon Republic") was a nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

On 30 December 2004, a fire broke out in the club, killing 194 people and injuring 714 others. The venue was playing host to rock group Callejeros and around 3,000 people were in attendance. The blaze was started when a pyrotechnic flare (a popular device in New Year's Eve celebrations) was set off and ignited foam in the ceiling. The materials used in the building for decoration were flammable: mostly wood, styrofoam, acoustic panels and a plastic net (a so-called media sombra). This plastic net was hung from the ceiling and caught fire first, melting into a rain of fire. In some parts of the building, teddy bear stuffing was used as a cheap alternative to wool fiber. The owner and the band's lead singer had told the patrons not to use flares inside the building.

Four of the six doors, some of which were fire exits, were chained shut so that "people would not enter without paying", according to Mayor Aníbal Ibarra. Most of the victims died from inhaling poisonous gases, smoke and carbon monoxide, unlike most accidents of this kind, where most die from crushing or burning. Speculation was that there was a nursery room in the ladies' restroom but this has been proven false.

I would urge everyone to research all the facts about Altamont. The Hells Angels did exactly what they were expected to do. They provided security to all and prevented the armed individual from harming all that were in attendance, fans and performers alike, as was ruled in Court. The tragedy was the Insult to all that welcomed The Rolling Stones and how they shit on us all as a result. A.H.Gross Jr Mojave Ca.

After much research on the Altamont tragedy, it's obvious that there were multiple factors that contributed to the chaos. The event was held at Altamont on such short notice that they couldn't build a proper stage that would protect the over zealous fans, many of whom were also heavily drugged. Hiring the Hells Angels, who are a disgrace to the human race, was an act of stupidity only topped by the decision to give them as much beer as they could drink.There are also credible reports that they had taken bad Acid with too much speed, which just aggravates the whole situation. The Hells Angels were having a great time roughing up the crowd, there were practically no police or other security guards there. To make matters worse, after the Dead decided to split, Jagger refused to go on because he wanted it completely dark for his "Dramatic entrance", so the crowd was left to their own devices for over an hour, creating even more tension in an already environment. The situation with Meredith Hunter is complex. He was punched by the Hells Angels after trying to jump on stage - he was then thrown back into the crowd. He was also seriouslyf*%ked up on meth, and yes, he did have a revolver and pointed it at the stage. I don't blame the Hells Angels for trying to subdue him, but they did a lot more than that - after stabbing him 5 times they savagely kicked and beat him to death! Clearly, Meredith Hunter was off and needed to be subdued, but the way the whole thing went down with the Hells Angels from start to finish really speaks volumes for the kind of losers they really are... This was truly a sad day in our history.